Ain't
by sunflowerb
Summary: ."Ain't.." "Yes. Ain't. It's a word, princess." And it has plenty of uses: she ain't old enough for you. You ain't young enough for her. She ain't legal... That was just Axel's luck: falling for a fifteen year old. KH2. kaixel. oneshot.


**AN: I honestly am not sure that I know how a totally random and totally KH-unrelated conversation between my brother and I could have turned into this. It's random, and perhaps Axel's a tad bit OOC, but I think it's decent anyway.**

**Oneshot, sorta Kaixel. **

**Disclaimer: There comes a time when you stop caring about making these things entertaining. Now it's just depressing.**

_Ain't_

"You're an incredibly stubborn little chick, aren't you?"

Axel found it absolutely astounding that anyone could have quite a profound deficit of upper-body strength at their disposal. The crimson-haired teenager was pulling with all her might at his arm, but he was having to put forth no effort whatsoever to combat her. The princess's pink sneakers scraped uselessly at the ground (if it could even be called ground) of the portal they travelled through. Despite the blatant hopelessness of the situation, she continued trying to break free from Axel's grasp. At first, he found this mildly amusing. Now, it was just annoying. She was persistent, he'd give her that.

"Let go! Let go!" Kairi whined, trying in vain to pry Axel's hand off of her wrist with her free hand. Axel rolled his eyes.

"You've been saying that for the better part of the last ten minutes, Kairi, but in case you haven't noticed, I'm not going to let go." He looked back at her and smirked. "In fact, you can keep saying that until the cows come home, but it ain't gonna do you any good."

Kairi suddenly paused her frantic attempts at escape and raised her eyebrows at him. "Ain't?" She asked, bewildered.

Axel stopped walking and turned to face her, not loosening his grip. "Yes. Ain't. It's a word. Got it memorized?" The pyromaniac rolled his eyes and went back to dragging the helpless princess through the nothingness.

He heard the Kairi's exasperated sigh. "I _know _it's a word. I just can't believe a bad guy actually used it in civilized conversation."

Axel laughed, simultaneously noticing that his grammar seemed to have at least gotten the princess to momentarily give up trying to wrench her arm free. "One, I 'm not really such a bad guy once you get to know me. Two, I'm kidnapping you. I don't see anything civilized about that. Three, didn't that idiot boyfriend of yours ever use the word 'ain't'?"

"Boyfriend?"

Axel could have sworn his eye twitched. "You know, Sora. Gravity defying hair, runs around with a duck, a dog, and shoes that don't fit. Total moron...you know. That boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend!" The extremity of Kairi's defensive tone caused Axel to glance back at her in curiosity. She was blushing something awful. Axel found this amusing.

He smirked at her. "Yet."

Kairi scoffed and stuck out her bottom lip. Axel supposed this was supposed to be some sort of attempt at maturely refuting his claim. It just made Axel laugh. He stopped walking for a moment, and turned to face the teenager. She certainly had spunk. Wonder Naminé wasn't like that. Axel had been expecting the princess to give up the second he confronted her and break down into tears. "What do you mean, yet?" Kairi demanded, trying to look intimidating. Her attempt at intimidation included narrowing her eyes, frowning her perfect pink lips, and puffing out what lacking chest she had. Axel wondered if he should tell her that just because she could melt the keyblade master with one look, didn't mean that it worked that way with everyone.

"Providing that the fabulously moronic keyblade master doesn't get himself killed, and that you stop trying to run away from me long enough for me to get you to him, you ain't gonna be able to keep your hands off of him." He noticed her flushing again, partially from his accusation, partially from frustration with his grammar, which, admittedly, he'd used just to get on her nerves.

"Again with the ain't," she muttered. "And as for Sora...that's none of you business!" She said this last part so quickly and with such a defensive quality that it only served to further confirm the two teens' involvement. After observing Sora he couldn't fathom _why _the princess was so infatuated with him. The boy was a dork, frankly. It wasn't hard to see why Sora returned the affections; Kairi was pretty, and she had spunk (that much Axel knew for certain), and while a bit too young for him, Axel could see that she would be any fifteen-year-old boy's dream.

It was a pity the girl was so much younger than him. He would have already started to try and woo her if she'd been legal. Finally he rolled his eyes and started to drag her along again. "Whatever. Come on, jail bait."

He'd made it about two steps before he heard, "_What _did you just call me?" shouted indignantly at the back of his head. He stopped again, rubbed his temples, and then turned to face her. "Jail bait. I called you jail bait." He turned back around and proceeded to pull her away. She was silent for a moment. She also seemed to have given up on getting away from him.

"If I had a keyblade I'd..." Kairi trailed off when Axel started laughing.

"Babe, I would _love _to see you try." Axel somewhat liked this girl. She was a saucy little thing; she had that going for her. She certainly didn't take to well to being a damsel in distress, and she hadn't yet told him she was going to sick her knight-in-shining-armor on him yet. If only she was legal...Axel certainly didn't consider himself a model citizen, but he wasn't _that _evil.

"Well, Sora's got one. When I find him, do you know what I'm going to do?" she asked threateningly.

"Him?" Axel smirked at the princess's shocked silence. He wouldn't have said it if she hadn't pulled the "my boyfriend can beat you up" card. Here he was thinking she was better than that.

"No," she said finally, her voice about an octave higher, "I'm going to take his keyblade and beat you to bits with it. I'm a princess of heart; surely I can wield it." Axel found himself resisting the urge to say, "That's my girl." She wasn't pulling the "I'll send my boyfriend after you" card; she was intending to fight her own battles. Axel found that kind of independence attractive.

"How old did you say you were again?"

"...Almost sixteen."

"As in fifteen?"

"Well...yeah, just closer to sixteen."

Axel shook his head. In all likelihood, Kairi was at least four months from her sixteenth birthday. He remembered describing his age as "almost sixteen" a full five months before the actual date. Fifteen, sixteen; it didn't really matter. Either way she was still a minor. And either way, he still wasn't. It worried Axel a little bit that he was finding himself falling for the fifteen-year-old arm-candy of the "heroic" keybrat. He could hear Roxas now; "Axel, she's fifteen! You're twenty-one! You're like, eight years older than her!" (Roxas had never been great at math).

"Anyway, my point was that you're going to pay for all the trouble you've caused me. I've had to run away from home; I've ended up in a strange town far away from home and my friends, _again._ I've gotten kidnapped, _again._ Just by a different person this time. You've insulted me repeatedly. You've set those creepy white things on me. You've-"

"Will you please stop talking?" Axel was beginning to get annoyed. His annoyance only increased when Kairi smirked; she had realized that she was annoying him, and had clearly just decided to milk it for all it was worth.

"I'm just getting started. You've pried into my personal life. You've-"

Axel rounded on her. "If you don't stop talking, I'll kiss you." Kairi blinked. She opened her mouth to say something, stopped, closed it, and then opened it again. Lather, rinse, repeat. She finally closed her mouth and stared in bewilderment at him for a moment.

Finally, "You're kidding me, right?"

Axel shook his head. "No. I'm not. I'll kiss you. You've never been kissed before, have you?"

Kairi blushed. "That's none of your business!"

Axel smirked. "Ha! You haven't! If you had, you would have said so! But you haven't, and, not wanting to admit that, you simply try to avoid the answer altogether. And any idiot, with the exception of His Brilliancy Sora, can see that you're in love with the keyblade master and you want him to give you your first kiss." Axel paused for a moment and let this sink in to the teenager's mind. She didn't seem sure how to reply, and she was almost looking a bit forlorn. Overall, her demeanor screamed that Axel was spot on, and she didn't have to slightest clue how to defend herself against something that was so true. Taking this as encouragement, Axel continued. "If you don't shut up and stop bothering me, I'll kiss you; and then it will have been _me _that gave you your first kiss, and not Sora."

Kairi was silent. She simply stared at him in disbelief. He could see it in her eyes that he was right. "Isn't that slightly illegal?" She asked finally, still slightly pink. Axel smirked.

"Do I look like I care?" In all honesty, he _did._ A huge part of him just wanted her to shut up, and had no intention of actually following through with his threat. The other part of him wanted her to say something, to keep talking, to force him to steal that innocent first kiss that should have been Sora's. She was so young, so innocent, so pure; and a huge part of him wished she wasn't. Why did she have to be so restricted?

Axel turned away from the defeated teenage girl and proceeded to once again drag her away. He'd gone from feeling playful and annoying to being in a bit of sour mood. She was so young...so, so young. And her heart belonged to that idiot Sora. Did that moron have half a clue how good he had it? Did he even understand?

"I take it you aren't going to kiss me after all?" Kairi said quietly from behind him.

Axel sighed exasperatedly. "Calm down, princess. I ain't gonna kiss you."

"Well ain't that grand," Kairi muttered sarcastically. There was silence for a second. Then, as it hit him, Axel audibly smirked. "Shut up!" She told him aggravatedly. It only served to make Axel chuckle louder.

When he finally calmed his chuckles, Kairi had retreated into a silent brood. She certainly seemed to have given up. She hadn't tried to escape in at least ten minutes. It was a long way to where he was taking her; he was glad he wouldn't have to fight her the whole way there. She'd be exhausted by the time they reached their destination if she did.

"What have you got against the word 'ain't' anyway?" Axel asked, breaking the now-too-quiet silence.

"It's so grammatically incorrect. It just doesn't fit in conversation. It's not a very good word." Axel rolled his eyes. 'Ain't' had plenty of applications. Like, she ain't getting away. Sora ain't that intelligent. She ain't old enough for you. You ain't young enough for her. She ain't legal...

"Hey Axel?"

"Hm?" Axel turned for a minute to look at her, and was surprised to feel something soft and warm brush his cheek. Shocked that the child had kissed him, he momentarily released her arm. It was all the time she needed. She slipped her thin wrist from his grasp, kicked his shin, and took off. By the time the shock had worn off, and the pain in his shin had subsided, she was a good distance away, and showing no sign of slowing down.

Axel huffed a sigh. "This just ain't my day."

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AN: So, what's the verdict? Good, bad? Review and let me know. I honestly don't mind Kaixel half the time. I'm okay with it as long as it doesn't come off as pedophilia.

The review button is ticklish. Click him and tickle him.

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